Triumphant at the final breath, Their senile God, their cops, All the authorities and friends pro tem Passing her pillow, keeping her concerned. But the cowardly obit was already written; Morning would know she was a common slut.

Russians who stood for tragedy Were sisters all around; Dark conscience of the family, down she lay To end the career of passion, brain a bruise; And mother-wonder filled her like a tide, Rabid and raging discipline to bear.

In came the monarchist, a nurse, And covered up her eyes; Volkstaat of hate took over; suddenly The Ego gagged, the Conscious overpowered, The Memory beaten to a pulp, she fell. It remained to hide the body, or make it laugh.

Yet not to sink her name in coin Like Caesar was her wish, To come alive like Frick, conjecture maps, Or speak with kings of low mentality, But to be left alone, a law to scorn Of all, and none more honored than the least.

This way she died, though premature Her clarity for others; For it was taught that, listening, the soul Lost track and merged with trespasses and spies Whose black renown shook money like a rat And showed up grass a mortmain property.

KARL JAY SHAPIRO,Person Place and Thing (1940)

"Death of Emma Goldman," by Karl Shapiro. Reprinted from Poems 1940-1953, by Karl Shapiro, in Richard Drinnon's Rebel in Paradise